During her lifetime, June Allyson, known for her "girl next door" roles, championed causes related to the medical profession. So it's only natural that she would have chosen to depict the career of Emily Dunning Barringer, the first US female ambulance surgeon and surgical resident. We first meet Emily as a teenager at the turn of the century. When her mother passes out from labor pains, she must find a local doctor to assist. Emily ends up finding a neighborhood physician, Marie Yeomans (Mildred Dunnock) and even she is taken aback when she discovers that Yeomans is a woman. Yeomans is a fictional character based on a family friend of Emily's, Dr. Marie Jacobi, who was instrumental in convincing Emily and her mother to go ahead and take a medical preparatory course sponsored by Cornell University.
The break into the Second Act occurs when Emily begins attending Cornell and is subjected to sexism by the all-male coterie of medical students. She falls in love with Ben Barringer (Arthur Kennedy), another student there, but when he is to continue his studies at Harvard and asks Emily to be his wife without continuing her own studies, she rejects that idea out of hand.
The film then ably chronicles Emily's difficulty in obtaining a surgical residency at a hospital in New York City. Finally, through Dr. Yeoman's help (she prods the Health Commissioner), Emily is appointed the first surgical resident at Gouveneur's Hospital. There she butts heads with Dr. Seth Pawling (Gary Merill), the director, who also doesn't like the idea of female physicians. In addition to enduring the ridicule of her fellow interns (which was probably worse than depicted here), she proves her mettle "in the trenches" as a physician. Barringer ends up working at the hospital too, and provides moral support.
Two scenes highlight Emily's competency: assisted by the kindly ambulance driver Alec (Jesse White), they drive to the scene of a shipyard accident, in which a laborer appears to have taken a bad fall. Emily diagnoses the problem as a dislocated arm and using all her strength, resets the bone much to the surprise of the grateful laborer. Later, a callous physician declares a patient dead but Emily hears a heartbeat with her stethoscope and conscripts a team of nurses, getting the man back on his feet, plying him with continuous cups of coffee, walking him around until he regains full consciousness.
This revival of the dead man causes Pawling to recognize Emily's talents and he apologizes to her for his earlier prejudicial attitude.
Allyson, with her bubbly personality, suggests that not only did Emily bring her smarts to the profession but a sense of compassion and empathy to her patients, in striking contrast to many of the stuffed shirts, who harbored haughty attitudes toward women and dealt with patients without the "personal touch."
Emily is depicted as pretty much optimistic throughout the narrative, except for the scene in which she threatens to quit the profession after suffering a wall of discrimination. Nonetheless, given Allyson's skill in conveying the aforementioned optimism of the film's protagonist, we don't really mind too much that she comes off as a bit of a one-dimensional "good gal."
Unfortunately the other principals are depicted as virtual saints, with the film veering off in the direction of hagiography. It's more than likely audiences at the time sensed this, as The Girl in White lost money at the box office. According to this film, the only remedial correction the medical profession needed at the turn of the century, was to overcome its antipathy toward women. Left out were any suggestions of medical tyranny: the rise of pharmaceuticals and their dangerous side effects, leading to iatrogenic disorders coupled with the reliance on dark theories of contagion, resulting in authoritarian edicts (so readily evident in our own time).
Barringer (whom Emily eventually married) is perhaps the dullest character in the film-his only sin was to early on discourage Emily from continuing on in the profession. Later on, he puts a band-aid on his finger after he's exposed to radium (did anyone ever suffer from the use of such radioactive substances prescribed by doctors at any point? Not dealt with!). Dr. Pawling is another rather dull character who's allowed a measure of redemption when he apologizes to Emily. He's another "saint" who's depicted similar to a captain of a ship: "steady at the helm." Again, it's only the misogyny that needs to be corrected in the medical profession and not any symptoms of treatment overreach.
The third saint in the triptych is Dr. Yeoman whom receives a curtain call when she's called on to work at Gouveneur's Hospital during a typhoid outbreak. When she drops dead of heart failure, the violins are trotted out.
The Girl in White is your standard Hollywood biopic; watchable due to Allyson's warm presence on screen. You will learn very little about the medical profession here except for its early history of poor treatment of women. By the time the film is over, women are now depicted as having been accepted into the revered fraternity of medical professionals-now both sexes can be placed on their high and mighty pedestals and pontificate all they want, without any challenge whatsoever.
The break into the Second Act occurs when Emily begins attending Cornell and is subjected to sexism by the all-male coterie of medical students. She falls in love with Ben Barringer (Arthur Kennedy), another student there, but when he is to continue his studies at Harvard and asks Emily to be his wife without continuing her own studies, she rejects that idea out of hand.
The film then ably chronicles Emily's difficulty in obtaining a surgical residency at a hospital in New York City. Finally, through Dr. Yeoman's help (she prods the Health Commissioner), Emily is appointed the first surgical resident at Gouveneur's Hospital. There she butts heads with Dr. Seth Pawling (Gary Merill), the director, who also doesn't like the idea of female physicians. In addition to enduring the ridicule of her fellow interns (which was probably worse than depicted here), she proves her mettle "in the trenches" as a physician. Barringer ends up working at the hospital too, and provides moral support.
Two scenes highlight Emily's competency: assisted by the kindly ambulance driver Alec (Jesse White), they drive to the scene of a shipyard accident, in which a laborer appears to have taken a bad fall. Emily diagnoses the problem as a dislocated arm and using all her strength, resets the bone much to the surprise of the grateful laborer. Later, a callous physician declares a patient dead but Emily hears a heartbeat with her stethoscope and conscripts a team of nurses, getting the man back on his feet, plying him with continuous cups of coffee, walking him around until he regains full consciousness.
This revival of the dead man causes Pawling to recognize Emily's talents and he apologizes to her for his earlier prejudicial attitude.
Allyson, with her bubbly personality, suggests that not only did Emily bring her smarts to the profession but a sense of compassion and empathy to her patients, in striking contrast to many of the stuffed shirts, who harbored haughty attitudes toward women and dealt with patients without the "personal touch."
Emily is depicted as pretty much optimistic throughout the narrative, except for the scene in which she threatens to quit the profession after suffering a wall of discrimination. Nonetheless, given Allyson's skill in conveying the aforementioned optimism of the film's protagonist, we don't really mind too much that she comes off as a bit of a one-dimensional "good gal."
Unfortunately the other principals are depicted as virtual saints, with the film veering off in the direction of hagiography. It's more than likely audiences at the time sensed this, as The Girl in White lost money at the box office. According to this film, the only remedial correction the medical profession needed at the turn of the century, was to overcome its antipathy toward women. Left out were any suggestions of medical tyranny: the rise of pharmaceuticals and their dangerous side effects, leading to iatrogenic disorders coupled with the reliance on dark theories of contagion, resulting in authoritarian edicts (so readily evident in our own time).
Barringer (whom Emily eventually married) is perhaps the dullest character in the film-his only sin was to early on discourage Emily from continuing on in the profession. Later on, he puts a band-aid on his finger after he's exposed to radium (did anyone ever suffer from the use of such radioactive substances prescribed by doctors at any point? Not dealt with!). Dr. Pawling is another rather dull character who's allowed a measure of redemption when he apologizes to Emily. He's another "saint" who's depicted similar to a captain of a ship: "steady at the helm." Again, it's only the misogyny that needs to be corrected in the medical profession and not any symptoms of treatment overreach.
The third saint in the triptych is Dr. Yeoman whom receives a curtain call when she's called on to work at Gouveneur's Hospital during a typhoid outbreak. When she drops dead of heart failure, the violins are trotted out.
The Girl in White is your standard Hollywood biopic; watchable due to Allyson's warm presence on screen. You will learn very little about the medical profession here except for its early history of poor treatment of women. By the time the film is over, women are now depicted as having been accepted into the revered fraternity of medical professionals-now both sexes can be placed on their high and mighty pedestals and pontificate all they want, without any challenge whatsoever.